Social media is the social interaction among people in which they create, share, or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Social media have a huge market potential, financially, and companies like Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn have realized hundreds of millions of dollars in profit by leveraging peoples' social media networks. (Note: the term(s) “FACEBOOK”, “GOOGLE” and/or “LINKEDIN” may be subject to trademark rights in various jurisdictions throughout the world and are used here only in reference to products or services properly denominated by the marks to the extent that such trademark rights may exist.) A persons' social media network becomes more valuable to themselves and to the social media company as the network grows because this exposes more targeted content to a specific user for, and on behalf of, trust sources. It is therefore common for social media companies to devise ways to recommend to users other people that are similar to themselves, so that they add them to their personal networks.
Many social media companies will make these recommendations based upon an evaluation of how interconnected the existing second, third, and fourth generation connections of users are. For example, if two people both have the same person listed in their network, the social media company may suggest that those people become connected. Other social media companies may make recommendations based on commonalities in attributes in the profile (user name, birth location, school attended, etc.). Others will attempt to infer possible connections from strangers based solely on the types of content they both comment on within the social network.